The emails show the “anti-woke” crusaders are afraid of accountability.
MeToo was never very successful. It was basically a boycott movement, its only leverage being the impression of losing sales when an associate was outed as an abuser. Sometimes that meant a lost contract or delaying a comedy tour by a year or two, usually for someone rich enough to retire early.
It was done away with the moment its vague political embedding (liberalism) decided to change the rules because they wanted their abuser in power. Biden.
I think Me Too was successful at the micro scale. It brought a lot of victims the power to speak out against their assailants. I know a few women who felt empowered by the movement and that made significant changes in their lives as a result. They would say that seeing other women speak up helped them feel safe to speak up for themselves too.
Did it solve anything at a systemic level? Not really. Was anyone of systemic consequence punished for it? Not really. But I do think it had some benefit, at least to the people I know.
I’d say too that if it was completely meaningless the Dems would never have worked so hard to shut it down. The fact that they went out of their way to kill it proves to me that the movement did have some power
“Having some power” is liberal language that rationalizes losses or ineffectual acts, trying to make them more than they are. You will hear it in every chauvinist pro-cop union and even at the pro-Biden rallies sponsored by “feminist” groups.
Dems took what I described and said “no we want an abuser so time to use every reactionary canard but wrap it in our lexicon”. It had exactly the power I described and then it was done away with. MeToo is dead. It accomplished almost nothing. Nearly every abuser is back at their old station in some fashion.
Yes one can take solace in individuals who took inspiration and improved their own lives. You can say this for any PR movement that uses the language of liberation, honestly. You really can. But we should categorically reject the tendency to try and eke out “wins” from failure, loss, or “movement building” that wasn’t really anything substantial in the first place. It is mollifying and self-defeating. The lesson to learn from MeToo is how to avoid repeating its failure. Otherwise one will just keep themselves occupied with failed liberal methods and tacitly promoting them to others. Embrace valid criticism or help us all fail.
What would make sense to me is that after his prison sentence Epstein no longer collected compromising material and instead built a rich abuser solidarity network.
